Staunton, April 16 — For the last three months, the Russian population has been declining, and Moscow has coped with this by not publishing its usual monthly data collections or calling attention to the data in any way. But the regime is not capable of functioning without at least some officials having data, accurate or […]
Staunton, April 11 – Pro-Putin activists have redirected their fire from people in Sverdlovsk Region who are opposed to the war in Ukraine to faculty and staff of the Urals Federal University who they accuse of transforming that institution into “’a center for the preparation of color revolutions,’” according to Kseniya Kirillova. Just as at […]
Staunton, March 5 – The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, to suggest that old rules and old expectations no longer apply and thereby increase uncertainty and fear. That explains why someone like Kseniya Sobchak has suggested that she is next on Putin’s list now that the Kremlin has killed Boris Nemtsov and why an […]
Staunton, December 9 – The Russian government has never been pleased by the fact that it must now deal with more than 80 Muslim spiritual directorates (MSDs) rather than a single centralized one. Meanwhile, some Muslim leaders – most prominently Talgat Tajuddin of Ufa – have sought to form a Moscow patriarchate-style central leadership to […]
Staunton, November 20 – Given the low level of formal institutionalization of Russian social and political life, those who seek to understand it regularly discuss it in terms of bands or clans, typically analytic constructs in which the individuals involved are linked together by personal ties based on economic interests, past service in particular organizations […]
Staunton, July 11 – In order to boost the birthrate, the Russian government would like to make the three-child family the norm, but at present, only eight percent of Russians are parents of three or more children, and they are older, poorer, more rural and more likely to be related to Russian Orthodox priests than […]
